windowsgenuineadvantage posts

Product activation is something that's been bugging computers users for years now, and whilst the inconvenience to users has been somewhat minor, it appears that the Doomsday-esque scenario of activations being impossible due to a technical fault seems to have struck. Of all the companies that it could have hit, BoingBoing is reporting that it has hit a rather large and dominant player in the software activation world: Microsoft. Redmond's own Windows Genuine Advantage systems apparently failed, causing any activation requests to fail, resulting in the (legitimate) copies of Windows being marked as counterfeit and reducing the feature set to users.

If that weren't bad enough, the article also mentions that Microsoft is recommending people refrain from retrying activation until Tuesday the 28th of August. If you're unfortunate enough to get caught in this let us know in the comments.

Venerable Windows expert Ed Bott has been carefully documenting his misadventures with Windows Genuine Advantage for a few months now. As evidence mounted that the WGA system was not as bulletproof as Microsoft would like to have us believe, Ed decided to get statistical on their ass, so to speak. After scouring Microsoft's own help forums looking for people reporting problems with WGA, Ed found an extremely disturbing trend: a full 42% of the Windows installations that are flagged by WGA as not valid turned out to be perfectly legitimate. That's a far cry from the "almost perfect" and "we know of no problems with WGA" drivel that Microsoft continues to spout. And consider that the numbers used here are only for Windows users that were actually willing and able to find Microsoft's support forums and use them. I'd wager the real number is far worse.

Realistically, Microsoft didn't ever expect their user base to actually like WGA. As with all DRM software, there is absolutely nothing in it for the end user; the best case scenario is that the vendor (be it a media or software vendor) is going to inconvenience a number of their customers. The worst case scenario is this one; the vendor makes a large number of false positive detections, and significantly alienates a large percentage of their customers.

I should be clear that in opposing WGA, I'm not advocating software piracy. It's reasonable to expect Microsoft to try to protect their interests. What Ed's saying, and I'm agreeing with, is that Microsoft's first attempt at a tool to prevent piracy is horrifically flawed, and is resulting in nightmarish situations for many of their users.

Lucky for all of us, WGA is baked right in to Windows Vista. Gee, I can't wait for that.

I was considering prefacing this post with 'recipe for disaster', but I didn't want the food and cooking news aggregators to pick it up by mistake. Microsoft Watch is reporting that the Redmond giant is planning to use their Automatic Updates service to push IE 7 out to Windows users sooner or later in Q4 once the product is ready to ship. Fortunately for the sysadmins in the crowd, Microsoft will also provide corporations with the ability to optionally block or postpone the automatic download and installation of IE 7. Further, the update will be presented through a notification - it won't just happen automatically - and users who have chosen to hide IE altogether won't even be bothered with the download at all.

Of course, Windows users will still need to pass the WGA test, whether they grab this 4-years-coming update to Internet Explorer, whether they grab it through Automatic Updates or download it from Microsoft's site.

With all the digital rights management floating about in the ether these days, and fiascos like Microsoft's WGA, I found myself standing beside myself, saying "Self, how much DRM (Digital Rights Management) is enough?" Self turned to me and said, "I don't know, but whatever it is, it is enough." While I couldn't tell if this was more poignant or confusing, I think my self is right. Good grief! Why must companies ruin everything good they have going by making their customers angry (for no reason)? I agree that some DRM is needed (or something like it) to protect the interests of artists, but why make the customers suffer just to move music to places they can easily hear it? Microsoft's WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) is another way that Microsoft is trying to protect their assets. Someone need to come up with a secure yet fluid way to transfer and play music easily, without stomping on the customer's rights either. So far, I really don't see any good solutions to the DRM problem. Regardless, this WGA nonsense is ridiculous. How much DRM should we put up with, and how much do we need?

So let's just say, hypothetically, that your copy of Windows XP isn't "genuine." If you're tired of seeing the warning that alerts you to this fact, there's now a workaround to disable the WGA notifications. Does it work? Honestly I don't know, because every version of Windows I touch appears to be the real thing. And of course, I'm not here to advocate piracy. But the incessant twiddling of this whole WGA issue is kind of a mess, isn't it? Already pirates have figured out how to disable the check. Now you can disable the warnings, so it's like WGA doesn't even exist. It makes me wonder why MS is putting all versions of Vista on one optical disc, essentially setting up a very low-hanging fruit for potential pirates... But maybe that's the plan?

There's no beer involved, but according to Steve Dodson's blog Microsoft's AntiSpyware will NOT be a commercial application. That is, it will remain free for anyone running a genuine XP install. As long as you do the "Windows Genuine Advantage" thing, no problem. Apparently someone had posted up a purported comment from an MS employee stating AntiSpyware was no longer going to be free. Never trust those message boards, kids.

Steve goes on to explain that MS has said from day one that AntiSpyware will continue to be free. They will be rolling out an Enterprise edition so companies can administer the app as any good company would — from a server. Also, he reiterated the May announcement on OneCare, which is a bundle of services including antivirus, firewall, PC maintenance, and  backup (for data and settings). OneCare will charge, but it's still in beta for now as well.